So bored is definitely a relative term here; smelling moist barley, arranging boil kettle/fermentor and accessories, and sipping specially pre-chosen beers took up most of my time during my second round of AG brewing.

I brew with a partner, so we can do all of the little stuff in half the time, but there was just a whole lot of waiting. During our first AG, we picked hops from his yard but this time...not a whole lot going on.

To be clear, I am in no way complaining and I enjoyed every minute of that "boredom," just wondering if I should be doing something else with that time?

I always do the next step doing those times. Like, during the mash I'm heating the sparge water and fiddling around with the HLT. As I'm waiting for the wort to get to a boil, I measure out the hops. During the boil, I'm cleaning up the MLT and all of the other stuff. During the chill, I'm sanitizing the fermenter and setting up the aerator.

Even so, there is some downtime. I usually surf HBT, and drink a beer.

By getting everything cleaned up during the "down time", I have it all finished up so that when I'm done aerating the wort, everything is already cleaned and put away.

__________________Broken Leg BreweryGiving beer a leg to stand on since 2006

I do the same as Yooper, but still have chunks of downtime. I brew in my garage, which is also my woodshop/vintage Vespa garage, so I can always clean out sawdust from the table saw or tinker on the scooter.

Plenty to do during the brew, clean-up, get the next step ready and work on figuring out how to improve the process for the next time. I figure when I can finally get everything down to a science it will become boring and I will need to come up with another outlet. Did that with pizza & bread making and can pretty much do that without thinking about it so I moved into homebrew which will take a lot longer to conquer.

I vacuum the house or do the laundry or the dishes something else that SWMBO wants me to do. That keeps her from bugging me about taking so much time to brew. I mean, if I can make beer and still finish everything she wants me to take care of, there's nothing for her to complain about, right?

I do the same as Yooper, too. I get my next step or two ready, clean up anything that needs cleaning, and enjoy a beer. I reuse my MLT as a fermentation cooler, so usually during the boil I'm fairly busy for the first 20-30 minutes cleaning out the MLT, saving/disposing of spent grain, and getting my chilling setup ready.

I mostly surf HBT and crank up The Dead when I'm not cleaning or working on my next step. I'm in an apartment, so everything is happening right out on the porch. I can turn on the TV if I get insanely bored.